


Girls That Glitter Love The Dark

by paperclipbitch



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Music, Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Community: fc_smorgasbord, F/F, i just really wanted to write this okay, lesbian feminist cabaret au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Band AU</i>.  Snow is Red’s very favourite thing in the world, in a reasonably short life full of things she hasn’t gotten to keep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls That Glitter Love The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompts _art_ at cottoncandy_bingo and _ostentatiousness_ at fc_smorgasbord.
> 
> [Title is a song by Hannah Fury] Why yes, I _do_ have a band AU sickness, thanks for noticing. Well, this one is the one where Red and Snow are a fairytale cabaret feminist duo/band thing, with corsets and things. Like Amanda Palmer and Emilie Autumn and stuff I guess. I’ve been trying to write this idea for like two years, so go me! Now I just have to get my shit together and write the AU where they all work in a fairytale-themed stripclub, because, want.

Before Red was _Red_ , she was a drifting young woman who was often sad and a little bit lost, who wore short skirts with the intention of pissing off _someone_ , who spent her evenings dyeing her hair in the crappy tiny bathroom sink and falling asleep in front of the Food Network.

Before Snow was Snow, she… well, Red doesn’t have much of the story, hasn’t asked for it, but she does know that Snow was a _good_ girl.

.

There’s something pure about Snow, even laced into a silk corset that cinches her waist and pushes up her bust to something that should be obscene and somehow isn’t. It’s white, of course, with cream ribbons and cream lace and a frothing skirt of petticoats pinned up to reveal torn stockings and her thigh, pale in the dressing room half-light.

Red really _doesn’t_ exude purity, but she grins at herself in the mirror as she applies her lipstick, hair piled on top of her head and falling into her eyes. How much eyeliner is too much eyeliner: the eternal question, of course.

Snow is humming to herself, moving with difficulty as she laces her shoes up her calves, yet more ribbons tangling with her torn stockings. She’s wearing false eyelashes that cast black streaky shadows down her cheeks; Red reaches for the unforgivably hipster polaroid camera they always keep to hand, takes a shot before Snow can look up and realise. When she hears the click, sees the flash, Snow bursts out laughing, teeth white as her corset, wobbles on her heels for a moment.

Snow is Red’s very favourite thing in the world, in a reasonably short life full of things she hasn’t gotten to keep.

.

Red smudges the truth during phonecalls home, to where her grandmother runs a spotless guesthouse that always has room for her to come back, sleep in her childhood bed with her posters peeling from the ceiling and call herself _Ruby_. But she doesn’t do it, because when she left she swore that she wouldn’t go back. So she makes up a job and friends that she doesn’t have, and smiles down the phone like that’ll make Granny believe the lies more. She always could see right through Red.

“You could go back for thanksgiving,” Snow suggests, sprawled on another motel bed with her hands full of knitting and her eyes on the television.

Snow might have a family somewhere, but she’s never mentioned them. Red doesn’t pry because god knows she’s got things in her past she doesn’t want to talk about, but she doesn’t know what Snow would do for the holidays. She could bring her home with her, of course; Snow is better with people than Red is, and Granny would like her, and it isn’t as though Red is hiding that much because Granny figured it out for herself almost before Red did, freshman year and flushing at the wrong classmates. But then bringing Snow into the dull ordinary world that was Red’s until she learned there was something else feels wrong, somehow, and she doesn’t want to think about it too much.

“I’ll go see her next time we’re nearby,” Red replies, shrugging like none of it matters, and Snow smiles like she knows all the things Red isn’t saying, and forgives her for them.

.

Bloggers who are wrong say that they’re inspired by Snow White and Rose Red, which they’re not. For one thing, Red is far more wolfish than any little girl in a story who inadvertently saves a prince – and for another, Snow White and Rose Red were _sisters_. When Red crawls between Snow’s thighs to press her mouth against slick stocking and cold skin, the last thing her feelings could be called is _sisterly_.

Snow is Red’s softer, sweeter, brighter-eyed counterpart, though her eyes still sparkle sharply and her smile isn’t always _kind_ , not when you actually look at it. 

That was the idea, of course: a Little Red Riding Hood who was the girl _and_ the wolf, and a Snow White who was the princess _and_ the huntsman. Something like that, anyway, it gets jumbled up a little when they’re pressed under lights with a discordant piano and a handful of each other’s lyrics. 

“There are worse things for them to get wrong,” Snow points out, leaning over to grab their battered laptop from Red, skim through the (favourable) review of last week’s show.

“I’m going to remember next time that you like the idea of me being your fake sister,” Red replies, and Snow hits her with a pillow until Red can’t breathe for laughing.

.

David is the owner of their van and an unhappy marriage that’s all his own, and he and Snow have history of some kind that Red doesn’t ask about, maybe because she’s jealous, maybe because she doesn’t give a shit, maybe because David’s eyes are mostly kind of sad and he’s too nice to be cruel to. See, Red can play well with others _sometimes_.

They drink coffee in the gross hipster coffee shop around the corner from his apartment, and nobody talks about his wife, and Snow’s smile is different. Red tries not to notice that, dressed in leather pants and an oversized sweater, feeling half-naked without streaks of ribbons or a skirt made out of men’s shirts from goodwill. Technically, the clothes are just for the shows, for the photographs, but she’s gotten used to them, to heels and flounces and glitter, and the days when she dresses like an ordinary person don’t feel quite right anymore.

David owes Snow something, though Red never wants to know what – he’s the one who gave them the van he owned but wasn’t using – is that suspicious? Red still hasn’t decided – and loaned them the money to stick together a downloadable EP so they’d be something more permanent than just two girls in lipstick and foaming lace screaming at each other on a stage. His wife just _loved_ that, of course, but if David regrets his choice he never mentions it.

When Snow is in the bathroom, David studies Red a little over the rim of his coffee cup, and his smile is honest. “The travelling suits you,” he says. “I used to think Ma- Snow would fade away, just stuck here.”

Red knows what he’s telling her, of course she does, but she decides they can get through this gracefully, after all. “I know the feeling,” she replies, and knocks the toe of her boot companionable against his ankle.

.

They watch a terrible teen drama series Red can’t remember the name of while Snow combs the dye through her hair, refreshing the scarlet streaks that Red has made her trademark since they started whatever this really is.

Their apartment is pretty small and the utilities are always being cut off because no one’s there to pay the bills, but it’s a home that isn’t beholden to anyone else, and that’s something you really value once you’ve spent long enough living by someone else’s rules.

They have a song about that, of course, about Belle killing her Beast and wandering out into a world where she pick and choose her own curses – _watch out, they’ll ruin your childhood_ one reviewer warned, ignoring the fact that it’s the fairytales in that childhood that ruined you first.

Their fingers tangle, washing the dye out of her hair; the bathtub is full of red and the water pressure is dodgy at best, but it’s _their_ water. A small thing, but a good one nonetheless.

Snow pulls the towel away from Red’s hair, leaving it damp and curling and messy from where she’s been rubbing at it; Red grins at her, brilliant and suddenly taken with the domesticity she didn’t know she even wanted until it was hers for the taking, and Snow kisses her without saying anything, towel falling forgotten to the damp tiles.

.

For a long time, Red didn’t know who she really was or what she was going to do with her life. Waiting tables is fun and all, for about five minutes, and then it’s just sore feet and bored people staring at her breasts and holding a smile in place in the hope that her tips for today will cover a bill of some kind, just in case. She learned young, helping out Granny, and then when she was wandering in the hope that something would click into place it was the easiest way to earn just enough to keep going.

And now there is _this_. Red never thought she was a particularly good singer, but she is, at least when she’s singing things that aren’t designed for the radio, and she’s got enough bitterness and imagination to string together the half-rants they call their songs these days. They have fans, for a given value of fans; she can go to the laundromat and not get recognised, of course, but they get emails and messages from people they’ve touched, or helped, or entertained, and that makes this worth it, worth something more than just the way Snow kisses after a show, breasts spilling out of her corset into Ruby’s waiting hands.

It was unplanned and to a certain extent they’re still flying blind, but it makes money and it means _something_ , and Red doesn’t think she could ask for more, would even try now.

.

The first time Red met Snow, it was late and she was locking up the shitty diner she waited tables at and Snow was hiding in the back room like that ever works, and Snow’s eyes went wide and scared and her fingers curled her hands into little fists. Red, who knew a thing or two about how to land an actual punch, looked at how badly she’d screwed up a defensive stance, and offered her a beer.

Three beers later, she spilled something like _what, are you like, failed witness protection or something_ , and Snow rolled her pretty eyes and said _or something_ , and Red kissed her because drunken beautiful girls weren’t in the habit of just falling into her life like an accident or a gift, and if this was the only one she was going to get she was going to make the most of it. Snow kissing back was a surprise, but less of one than it maybe should’ve been.

Someone out there hates Snow, Red knows that much, though part of her doesn’t even understand how that could be the case. People are drawn to her, like that damn cartoon version of Snow White who can make woodland animals do housework for her, and she’s maybe the first person Ruby has ever truly _liked_. And perhaps the less said about the thing David pretends isn’t in his eyes, the better. It doesn’t help that dying marriage any, leave it at that.

When you cut right down to it, though, whatever it was that drove Snow out into the snowy night to stumble into Red’s path, she can’t be anything but grateful.

.

David brings them coffee and waves them off when they leave at five in the morning, Snow yawning in the passenger seat and waving goodbye until he’s a figure on a corner and then nothing. Red keeps her eyes on the road, the radio turned up loud, their clothes and transportable instruments in boxes to rattle around in the back. Nights spent _in_ the van are no fun either, Snow mumbling in her sleep with fingertips wrapped in Red’s hair, elbows in each other’s ribs, cold and uncomfortable and kicking one another in half-dreams. 

Their life is a jumble of shows and not-shows, of lace and lacings and laces, of leaning into one another at microphones and overlapping each other’s fingers on pianos, and the spaces afterwards, where no one’s watching and Snow’s eyes are painted up like a doll’s but the shine in them is real and honest and nothing but Red’s, all Red’s.

.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Girls That Glitter Love The Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12015135) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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